Healing is as much about the mind and the spirit as it is the body, if not more so. It involves faith that healing is actually possible and that some force is capable of producing it. People who believe that they are incapable of being cured, often because they have had multiple failed attempts at healing, will never be well until they can restore their faith in the act of healing itself. Supported with a little knowledge or the gentle guidance of an encouraging healer, this can be done. Where we place our faith depends on the cultural paradigm within which we develop our belief system around wellness. We believe healing can come from within us or from an external force. Up until the last two centuries, the healing philosophy of most people involved a combination of both. However, in the modern Western medical paradigm, there is an ever-increasing faith in technological monitoring as truth and the doctor as authority controlling that truth. There is no dispute that medical technology can be life-saving and have profound effects, but our over-reliance on it is slowly obscuring the ancient wisdom housed within our own bodies. I do not judge others for placing their faith in medical interventions – but I do judge our current system. I firmly believe that if given the full information, more time with their doctors to ask questions and better access to complementary medicine regardless of income level, people might choose their care differently. In the allopathic model, the patient is too often denied the agency necessary to make well-informed decisions regarding their own health.

Most alternative or complementary medicine healers fall more toward the end of the belief spectrum that healing comes from within. This involves a fundamental trust that our bodies and minds are capable of healing ourselves, with a little help. Our jobs as practitioners are to provide guidance to the body to facilitate healing, to remove roadblocks to the body’s proper functioning and then to allow the body to reintegrate. This involves looking at the body (and mind) as a whole system, focusing on preventive and foundational care. In this model, “healing” becomes health and wellness, the goal being to optimize the body’s general well-being so it can better handle less-than-ideal bodily states as they arise. When they do, we as practitioners are not fixing the body, we are – again – providing a better environment within the body for the body to repair itself. For example, I suffer from eczema. Within this paradigm, my practitioner treats it by restoring my gut function through diet, probiotics and encouraging homeostasis through natural supplementation. The aim of the protocol is to support my internal processes so that my body doesn’t produce an autoimmune response. A biomechanical example: a practitioner treating a knee injury would first look at the movement patterns established within the body and how the knee joint functions relative to the other joints in the body. Once a misalignment were to be found, a protocol of stretching, movement exercises, chiropractic work and massage would be indicated. The downside of this form of medicine is that it can take a long time to see results, although once realized they are typically long lasting. Sadly, we are often too impatient when we are suffering to allow the body the time it needs to react to this type of treatment.

On the other end of the belief spectrum lies the medical intervention camp. At its most extreme, the philosophy here is that the body cannot fix itself and an outside force is necessary for healing to occur. This is the dominant mode of thinking in Western cultures today, as is evidenced by the popularity of prescription drugs and surgeries as the first course of action. This type of healing relies largely on symptom management, or addressing the issue in a targeted and focused way rather than the more global view of addressing the body’s foundation. The clinical way often produces immediate short-term results. However, the criticism is that the results often do not last, or even worse the intervention can cause a series of harmful side effects later. In the case of my eczema, the course of treatment within this paradigm would be a corticosteroid cream applied directly onto the affected areas, which normally stops the eczema within a day or two. The problem is that most doctors do not inform their patients of the serious side effects of the cream, including thinning of the skin, liver injury and hormonal imbalances. These hormonal imbalances have even been documented in babies born to unsuspecting women who repeatedly used steroid creams during their pregnancies. Using the knee example from above, a typical treatment for a knee injury within this paradigm would be a corticosteroid shot directly into the knee, anti-inflammatory medication or surgery. For injuries due to accidents, surgery is sometimes the only option. However, with general ailments, rarely does surgery need to be the first course of action. Often if a biomechanical misalignment is treated early with postural re-education, extreme interventions like surgery can be avoided.

I find most people fall toward the middle of this spectrum, but leaning one way or the other predominantly. For example, I obviously favor more natural healing, but I have had desperate times in years past and have resorted to using both steroid creams and corticosteroid shots. I later regretted both decisions, but I can completely empathize with the person in pain who will do anything to just “fix it”, as I have been that person. It can be very difficult to have patience during suffering, as our belief that the body can heal itself can falter! For me personally, the more I develop body awareness, the more I can stay in touch with my core belief in my body.

Clearly, I believe in the body’s internal wisdom and ability to repair itself. Often in order to support this process, we need to make lifestyle changes that we don’t want to make, but the more we believe in our bodies the easier it becomes. The quick-fix is not always the best! Every like-minded healer I know (check my community page for some examples) is dedicated to restoring their clients’ faith in their ability to develop comfort and ease in their bodies for optimum health. If only more allopathic doctors could incorporate BOTH the faith in the patient’s internal wisdom with medical interventions as necessary, more of us could feel self-empowered and encouraged to thrive.

Cupping dates back to 1550 B.C., but it has recently enjoyed a resurgence in popularity since Michael Phelps hit the Olympic scene with the tell-tale cupping marks last year. Since then lots of misinformation and confusing half-truths about cupping have unfortunately circulated around the internet. “Cupping”, like “massage”, encompasses a wide range of modalities used for very different purposes. Depending on a practitioner’s license, some of it is within the scope of practice and some of it is not. Acupuncturists and Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners generally have the widest scope of practice and can perform everything from fire cupping, wet cupping (bloodletting), needling and magnetic cupping. Massage therapists, like me, can incorporate cupping very effectively into our work, but the important thing to understand is that it is a completely different kind of cupping than the stationary fire cupping most people think of when they hear “cupping”. What we do is moving cupping, and it can be an incredibly impactful complement to the massage (without the red marks!).

Moving cupping for massage therapists, according to the law in Texas, must mimic the movements of massage in general, as it is just another tool for the “manipulation of soft tissue”. In other words, the intent is to facilitate the same types of releases we are aiming for in massage. We use oil on the skin and slowly glide the suctioned cup across the skin in order to achieve the desired effect. This does not leave a mark on the skin. The type and size of the cup, as well as the amount of suction the therapist allows, will yield different results. In general, moving cupping increases circulation of blood and lymph, increases pliability in the tissue layers and engages the fascia in order to release adhesions. Essentially the cup creates a vacuum, lifting the tissues as opposed to pressing down into them. This alleviates all pressure from the area, including the pressure of gravity itself, creating more space in between fascia and muscle tissue and in between cells, allowing fluid to move more easily. The pressure on the nerves is also decreased.

In my practice, I use the cups in two ways: for myofascial deep tissue release and for lymphatic drainage. I use silicone cups of a few different sizes for the deep tissue releases, as they can provide the stronger suction that is needed in order to reach the deeper layers of tissue. Often when a client presents with a decrease in mobility, the problem is at least partially due to restrictions in the fascial layer, and the suction, lift and movement of the cup can assist in breaking up these sticky spots. It’s like skin rolling with a little added suction. Generally, the result is an increase in ease of movement. Clients say that it also feels good because it literally takes the pressure off of their achy spots. For lymphatic drainage, I use a small glass bell which offers a much more delicate suction, as the lymphatic system is very superficial. (See photo below for a general idea – although I do not use cups on the face.) After using my hands for MLD,

if there is particularly problematic swelling I will often follow the lines of the lymphatic channels with the bell very gently and slowly in order to further encourage lymph flow. One of my clients has fondly named this process “the edema kiss”. 🙂 The cup not only creates space for the fluid to flow but it also stimulates the contraction of the lymphangia (see my posts on the lymphatic system and MLD for a deeper explanation).

Other massage therapists probably use this tool differently, but this is the way I have found yields results for my clients. It also feels good! I don’t do stand-alone sessions of cupping by itself and rarely does my cupping comprise more than a quarter of the massage time. However, moving cupping has provided me with a powerful little complement to my massage practice. Hopefully this has clarified what “cupping” is and isn’t, at least in my practice. If you are interested in cupping, it’s best to ask your practitioner since, depending on the training and license received, their offerings may vary.

Many of us spend the majority of our time indoors, and a large percentage of this time is spent looking at screens which are within one to two feet from our faces. Much has been written about the biomechanical effects of staring at screens. Articles on forward head posture and “text neck” abound, and at this point there is no doubt that staring at a computer or cell phone with your head forward causes tightness at the back of the neck, along with many other undesirable effects. Today, however, I am interested in exploring a different aspect of constantly staring at screens: the chronic eye fatigue caused by fixating on one (near) visual object and the ripple effects felt throughout the body.

Part of the problem we face in the digital age is that there is a difference in visual demand when one is viewing the display on the computer screen compared to reading a printed text. An image which is produced on the screen is made up of thousands of tiny pixels which collectively form the image, making it harder for the eye to latch onto it. In order to focus, the eyes must readjust every few minutes. This constant readjustment over time is thought to cause repetitive stress to the ocular muscles, leading to Computer Vision Syndrome. The contrast of the word to the background, the glare of the computer screen and the reflection from the glass all contribute to increased visual demand. The longer we expose our eyes to this increase in visual demand, the more tension our eyes will experience and the more likely the tension is to spread.

Eye movements play a role in muscle tone, especially for the suboccipitals, a set of four pairs of muscles that connect the cranium to the first two cervical vertebrae.

These muscles move the head, but their critical importance lies in the fact that they serve as a sensory system, gauging where the head is in space and coordinating balanced movement throughout the rest of the body.

This is evidenced by the fact that the suboccipital muscles contain an unusually large number of proprioceptors, or sensory receptors called muscle spindles, which measure tension in the muscles. This information gives the brain the exact position of the head and neck relative to gravity. (The suboccipitals have 36 spindles per gram of muscle tissue whereas, for example, the gluteus maximus has less than 1 spindle per gram of tissue). These muscles are intimately connected to eye movements, and together they support the vestibular system in forming our righting reflex.

You can easily feel the connection if you place your hands on either side of the head with your thumbs just below the edge of the skull. Slowly let your thumbs work through the outer muscle layers so that you have contact with deep muscles. Close your eyes. Now try to move the eyes from side to side, and up and down without moving the head. You should be able to feel small changes in the muscle tone. Although the head and neck are kept still, the suboccipital muscles respond to eye movements. They are so fundamentally connected that any eye movement will produce a change in these muscles. This, in turn, will affect the spinal muscles as they take movement cues from the suboccipitals. In other words, chronic eye tension from sitting and staring at a screen will produce tension in the back of your head, down your spine and even into your pelvis, compounding the pain and stiffness caused by the biomechanics of the sitting posture itself.

In addition to pain and stiffness, pathological tension in both eye and neck muscles commonly causes headaches. Fatigued eye muscles can constrict blood vessels in and behind the eyes. The resulting vessel spasms are believed to be a major cause of ocular headaches, along with changes in the optic nerve. When the neck becomes tight, the occipital nerve can easily become compressed in the space between the first two vertebrae, referring pain to multiple muscles in the neck and head. There are also small myofascial strands, called myo-dural bridges, that connect the muscles in the back of the cranium to the dura mater, the membrane surrounding the brain and spinal cord. Increased tension in these muscles pulls on the dura mater, making the headache worse.

Essentially, we can not neglect the eyes when considering the healthiest postures and movement patterns. For most of us, our eye muscles are habitually focused on a computer screen rather than fluidly focusing at the variety of distances they need to avoid eye fatigue (like they would if we were outside more). In addition, eyes are generally more strained by close viewing than they are by distance viewing. It is a good idea when stuck indoors to follow the “20/20/20 rule” — every twenty minutes, look twenty feet away for twenty seconds. Better yet, get up and look out the window, or get outside during lunch without your cell phone and let your eyes feast on points in the distance.

Calming the nervous system long enough to allow the body to restore itself is a tenet of good health. Addressing the nervous system in this way is one of the principle underlying goals of massage, as I practice it, and helping all of us (myself included!) find ways to do it at home is one of the central themes of this blog. Responding to continual stimulation keeps the nervous system active, even when the body is seemingly relaxed. One such source of stimulation is auditory; the mind is constantly interpreting and processing sound. Some sound is welcome, like music, however much of what we perceive today is simply noise. We have become so accustomed to it that most of us don’t even realize how much energy we expend dealing with noise. The amount of sound humans have been exposed to during our trajectory of existence was relatively static until as recently as the last hundred years. During this period, there has been a marked uptick in the amount of sound experienced by the average person in almost any environment. Our nervous systems are not equipped to handle this much uninterrupted stimulation, so in order to allow ourselves some much needed parasympathetic nervous system activity, we need to actively provide an interruption in the sound stream.

To get a sense of the recent changes in our soundscape, we can turn to the brilliant work of Bernie Krause, musician and renowned soundscape ecologist. He explains the three components of our auditory ecosystem: geophony, biophony and anthrophony. Non-biological sounds, such as wind or ocean waves comprise the geophony of a sound environment. The biophony is provided by the non-human organisms, such as animals and insects. We humans round out the picture by adding the anthrophony, sounds which are increasingly chaotic, incoherent and LOUD. Krause has documented wild soundscapes all over the globe for almost fifty years. Some of his work has been used for film and some of it is simply for conservation purposes. Since he started doing this work, the percentage of the sound environment classified as anthrophony has increased dramatically. In his TED Talk, he explains that forty years ago, it would take him about ten hours of recording to extract one hour of usable material. Today, because of global warming, resource extraction and human noise, it takes over ONE-THOUSAND hours of recording to obtain one hour of pure material. I was astounded to hear that fully fifty percent of his archives comes from habitats so radically altered that they are altogether silent or can no longer be heard in original form. In other words, humans are creating a heck of a lot of noise (and destroying the biophony in the process)!

The effects on the animal kingdom are well documented. One of his most poignant examples of human sounds changing the ecology’s natural balance is that of the great basin spadefoot toad. These toads vocalize in a chorus that is in sync. The goal is cooperative: as the sound comes evenly from all directions, large predators can’t single out any one toad. (If only humans could work together in this way….) 6.5km away from the site where Bernie Krause was recording these amphibians was a site that became a favorite for U.S. Navy jets to perform training exercises. During one recording, there was a series of fly-bys, and the noise from the jets was so loud that it disrupted the toads’ chorus. It took the toads fully forty-five minutes to synchronize themselves and during this time two coyotes and a great horned owl were able to capitalize and prey on the vulnerable group. The more we alter the acoustic environment, the more we upset the balance of nature. The good news, however, is that, through habitat restoration and fewer flights, the toad population that was once diminishing in the 1980s is now returning to normal.

Humans must now do the same for ourselves. “Habit restoration” for us must include eliminating some of the din of everyday life. We exist in what Greg Hainge terms “the amplified maelstrom of the modern world”. His predecessor, R. Murray Schafer, warned of the “dangers of an imperialistic spread of more and larger sounds into the corner of every man’s life” way back in 1977. Forty years later his message is still the same and all the more necessary given the rise in noise pollution since his original work. The message? Listen. Listen mindfully, and eliminate some of the extraneous sounds when you can. We all spend time and energy trying to figure out ways to sleep better, to release contracted muscles and to engage in more mindful activities. All of these are ways to provide the mind and body with the most impactful form of healing: rest. Let’s add in some much needed rest for our ears! For a couple of weeks, I have turned off my air conditioning at night and slept with an overhead fan. The fan makes an almost imperceptible hum, which is nothing compared to the gale force gusts emitted by the air conditioning vents. I can physically feel myself relaxing as soon as the vents are silent. Turning off the air purifier an hour before bed also provides some welcome respite to my ears (I alternate nights so some nights I still get the most pure air possible while I sleep…it’s not a perfect system, I will admit). When I can get it quiet and dark before bed, I have recently been listening to Bernie Krause’s wild sanctuary recordings, just the 90 second clips before settling into the silence. Listen here. Want some other ideas for relieving the ears of their constant burden?

Enjoy beautiful music, but not all of the time. (I listen to plant music for an hour in the morning, “guilty pleasures” during exercise time and soothing sounds for massage … otherwise, it’s quiet.)

Drive without the radio on every once in a while.

Take a hike in the greenbelt (in many spots you can no longer hear the highway half a mile in or so) – without headphones on.

Unplug unnecessary appliances.

Use earplugs when in noisy environments.

Make a dedicated quiet space in your home, as far away from kitchen appliances and other sources of noise as possible.

Use throw rugs in the home (will need to be cleaned often)

Repair or replace noisy vents.

Spend a few minutes each day engaged in active listening. Try to pick out each individual sound. This will help your ears recognize the sounds that need to be eliminated.

Pay it forward and be a good neighbor – keep your music at an acceptable volume, for yourself and for others.

Lastly, most of us listen to music that is just too loud. The loudness of a sound is connected to the amplitude of the sound wave. A louder sound means the air molecules are moving with a greater amplitude and they, in turn, cause your ear drum to move with a larger amplitude. These sound waves are of a higher intensity and carry more energy per time across your sensitive eardrum. Too much energy carried too quickly across an eardrum, continually, will elicit a stress response.

My goal in writing this blog is to present simple ways we can all improve our well-being, even if they seem small. Much has been written about the constant and unrelenting stimulation modern humans face on a daily basis and its detrimental effects on well-being. The solutions to this situation are often obvious, yet the simplicity can elude us. Calming the nervous system is a good path, and resting our ears is a great first step.